Carpet used to be very expensive, but also serviceable. The good stuff (this looks like the good stuff) would have been wool, and it would have been taken up to clean and maintain on occasion pre-ww2. There was a lot more manual labor back then, skilled and not. So “have the maker touch it up” and “have someone beat the dust out with sticks” would both have been regular occurrences
Is it silk or something?
Probably wool (maybe wool and cotton) since it’s held up for this long in a high traffic semi-public area and was installed around 1909.
Carpet used to be very expensive, but also serviceable. The good stuff (this looks like the good stuff) would have been wool, and it would have been taken up to clean and maintain on occasion pre-ww2. There was a lot more manual labor back then, skilled and not. So “have the maker touch it up” and “have someone beat the dust out with sticks” would both have been regular occurrences
Maybe, I didn’t touch it.